A Woman’s Right to Drive

The male leaders of the Saudi world are considering allowing women to drive. I don’t know what the restrictions will be if this happens but I assume, minimally, that women will need male permission to drive. Some clerics and conservatives are worried that allowing women to drive will “corrupt” them. The women, that is. Men (especially clerics and conservatives worldwide) are presumably beyond corruption.

Abandoning the issue of the easy corruptibility of the wanton female body and psyche for the moment, let’s turn to the issue of women and driving.

I remember when there were essentially two cars in India, the stalwart Ambassador and the Premier Padmini. There were others, but I believe these were the two major ones on the road. My memory might be flawed; I was considerably younger then. Anyway, I’ve tried driving both these cars, and they’re pretty hard to drive. They require some strength for things like changing the gears and so on. Moreover, they’re just big and clunky.

Enter the Maruti 800. This remains my favorite car, because it was the first one I ever drove. A dinky little ~800cc car with a shell like a matchbox, the 800 was the product of a joint venture with Suzuki. The 800 was small, light, and easy to drive. It had a low bonnet that made it easy for women to look over the top at the road. The gears were easy to change. The tires were easy to change. The engine didn’t seem complicated. Basic maintenance tasks were easy to do. The size of the car increased traffic navigability. In short, the car was non-threatening and attractive to women. It drove easily, and zipped in and out of traffic like an experienced Delhi pedestrian. It could be easily parked anywhere, and if you couldn’t find parking, you could pick it up and slip it into your purse. Alright, I’m kidding, but you get the point. It was convenient.

Now, we know that women – all over the world – face a lot of flak about their driving. One reason is that a number of women are timid about their driving, which can be annoying on the road, but that is because women face a lot more flak about their driving. Women have more to lose if things go wrong, because men will blame accidents or mishaps on the light, or a stray animal, or the car, but if a woman is behind the wheel, she will always be blamed. Her gender assures it.

Another reason is because driving gives women a measure of independence. Women took to the 800 in droves. It was something of a gender revolution. No longer were women trapped in their houses, restricted to walking distances, or forced to endure public transport. The car was relatively inexpensive, and so it also launched a middle-class revolution. And middle-class women didn’t hesitate. They went to work, went shopping, to the movies, took their kids out, and sometimes went out – alone.

And this, I think, is what many men fear. This independence, perhaps, is what will “corrupt” women. It’s not that women are bad drivers, but that a woman driving, per se, is a fearful thing, a cause for concern. And it has nothing to do with how women drive, and everything to do with the fact that we drive. We do things for ourselves. It’s just another thing that chips away at the restrictive control of a patriarchal order.

My father, who is a king among men, made sure to teach all his daughters how to drive (and drive well), how to change a tire, and how to do regular checks on things like oil. He taught us to ignore things like people honking impatiently, and to drive with confidence. He taught us to drive like drivers, not “women drivers” – without the timidity that is driven, so to speak, into many women who learn to drive. And, he taught us to effortlessly navigate Delhi traffic by taking us through rush hour traffic time and again until we could do this confidently. I learnt to love driving. It was my stress-buster, my daily dose of freedom and solitude.

Every woman should have the chance to leave her house as and when she chooses, and go as far as she chooses. It frees the mind and spirit, not just the body. The right to drive is a wonderful thing, and every woman should have access to not just driving, but all the wonders of modern technology.

The crux of the matter here is choice. If I can drive, I may choose to, or not. If I can’t drive, I don’t have a choice. Feminism, to me, is about women having choices on par with everyone else.

Here are some links to good related articles:

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=2383

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/7001348.stm

The Saffron Revolution

The recent revolts in Myanmar (Burma) have not quite caught America’s eye. Sure, the New York Times (bless their hearts) is following the events with daily stories. But how many people read the NYT? It is something of an elite paper. News in the US can be highly localized. I do try to read the local news wherever I go. It gives you a flavor of the place you’re in. But there needs to be a balance in the news between local and global, because each affects the other. The events in Myanmar have not met with enough international media attention. The American media spent weeks on Anna Nicole Smith’s death and the subsequent legal disputes, but is doing a poor job of increasing international awareness.

This is not restricted to the American media, though. The Hindustan Times, one of India’s leading English dailies, continues to bury this story in the middle of the paper while posting cricket news on page 1.

This week’s revolt stands out because, despite fierce repression in the past, the monks have stood up to the military government. In response, they have been arrested, shot at, and beaten. Here are a couple of links worth checking out.

http://burmadigest.info/2007/09/26/bloody-crack-down-in-burma/

http://ratchasima.net/2007/09/27/burmas-saffron-revolution/

The NYT, as I said, is also following the story.

Not enough is being done to restrain the junta. I’m not in favor of the invasion of sovereign nations, but there is an international system of political checks and balances (even if some think it ineffectual). Economic sanctions are one option, though in the end it might hurt the common person more than it hurts the government. I’m not a trained diplomat – I don’t know. But there are people who do, and they really need to do something.

Perhaps India and China need to reassess their diplomatic relations with the junta government, since they are the two major nations in that part of the world. The NYT, in their 26 Sept 2007 editorial says:

“[T]he greatest leverage to forestall disaster lies with China, Russia and India, who are making money off the junta and enabling it to stay in power. China, Myanmar’s chief trade partner and the host of the 2008 Olympic Games, has beefed up arms sales to Yangon, formerly Rangoon, prompting Russia and India to do likewise as a way of offsetting Beijing’s influence. Moscow has discussed providing the junta with a nuclear research reactor, and India – the democracy on which the United States hopes to build a key security and economic relationship for the 21st century – had a senior minister in Myanmar for energy talks, even as the democracy protests were under way.”

To the Indian government: shame! Selling arms to a repressive military government is not non-interference, and it is particularly shameful coming from a country with a history like ours, with a history of fighting a repressive regime and striving, at great cost, for freedom. What the Indian government should be doing, among other things, is working towards freeing Aung San Suu Kyi.

1 October edit: I’m listening to On Point (on the radio). They’re talking about the events in Myanmar.  Burton Levin, the last US Ambassador to Burma, said that the junta were xenophobic and “nationalistic”, and wouldn’t care even if India, China, or Russia did step in and signal their disapproval (which, to date, they really have not). He also said that the junta were, however, very religious. So perhaps they would ease up on the repression? We’ll have to wait and see, but it sounds to me like nobody quite knows what to do about the events in Myanmar.